August 27, 2012

"Instead, there is a deep dive into Barack Obama’s known Communist associates, his late father’s avowed socialism, and his mother’s radicalism," writes David Weigel, about the Dinesh D'Souza movie that did so well at the box office over the weekend. Weigel, a political writer, not a movie reviewer, makes a go of fact-checking the movie. (Has the Obama campaign responded to it yet?)

Obama, according to D’Souza, was an anti-colonialist. “He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder,” wrote D’Souza. “Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America.”...

The movie is based on a book by D'Souza, which I ignored at the time, because I didn't see much basis to think that Obama had absorbed his father's ideas. Obama did — oddly (aptly?!) — call his book "Dreams From My Father," but he spent almost no time with his father. Though I read "Dreams," I hadn't thought much about the pathway of the father's "dreams" into the son. The movie made mesee that pathway: the mother.

Stanley Ann Dunham was drawn to Obama Sr. when she was 17. The association didn't last long and didn't have much reality to it, but she nurtured the dream version and taught it to young Obama. Her second husband disappointed her, after they moved to Indonesia, the third world country that fit with her young dreams, because he turned to Western-style politics and commerce. Obama heard Lolo and Ann arguing about her refusal to attend dinner parties where he wanted to network with Westerners to advance his career. In this setting, Ann plied the young Obama with stories about his father and his — really, her — ideas about the rich and the oppressed.
D'Souza culls many of his facts from "Dreams."* The movie mostly organizes and presents information within a template, demonstrating a theory. D'Souza is doing what lawyers do. And as in a legal case, we can't necessarily ever know the truth for certain, but we do need to make decisions and move forward. And as in law, we combine our opinion about how likely something is to be true with our assessment of the risks of deciding one way or the other, and we decide. The D'Souza movie is like a closing argument, displaying some facts and theories about how the facts fit together, along with pressure to see the huge risks if Obama gets a second term.

I guess the first book packaged the material for hardcore Obama-haters who were ready for a hearty meal a year before the election. The new book is a tie-in to the movie, and the movie — and presumably the new book — were cooked up to suit mainstream tastes, for those picky eaters known as swing voters. I could buy them both and test out that theory, but I'm just going to buy the new one.
_______________________________

Looking back, I’m not sure that Lolo ever fully understood what my mother was going through during these years, why the things he was working so hard to provide for her seemed only to increase the distance between them. He was not a man to ask himself such questions. Instead, he maintained his concentration, and over the period that we lived in Indonesia, he proceeded to climb. With the help of his brother-in-law, he landed a new job in the government relations office of an American oil company. We moved to a house in a better neighborhood; a car replaced the motorcycle; a television and hi-fi replaced the crocodiles and Tata, the ape; Lolo could sign for our dinners at a company club. Sometimes I would overhear him and my mother arguing in their bedroom, usually about her refusal to attend his company dinner parties, where American businessmen from Texas and Louisiana would slap Lolo’s back and boast about the palms they had greased to obtain the new offshore drilling rights, while their wives complained to my mother about the quality of Indonesian help. He would ask her how it would look for him to go alone, and remind her that these were her own people, and my mother’s voice would rise to almost a shout.

They are not my people.

... She had always encouraged my rapid acculturation in Indonesia... She had taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad.

What I remember from the movie and am not seeing in the book (at least not in that part) is that Obama not only heard Stanley Ann and Lolo fighting, but that she told Obama stories about his father, who opposed Westerners, thus making the father into some sort of ideal that the mother preferred to her current husband. We're invited to imagine how the boy, missing his father and hearing those fights, built up the "dream" of that father, and how that anti-Western ideology therefore became the framework of his psyche.

ADDED: Here's the corresponding material in the D'Souza book "Obama's America":

Obama spent four years in Indonesia, and during that period he became very close to Lolo. Indonesia was, at least at first, an elusive and strange place, and Obama recalls that “it was to Lolo that I turned for guidance and instruction.” After all, “his knowledge of the world seemed inexhaustible.” He offered the young boy “a manly trust.” Mostly Lolo taught Obama that the world was a tough place and that men must learn self-reliance. At one point Obama asked Lolo, “How many beggars are there on the street?” Lolo replied, “Better to save your money and make sure you don’t end up on the street yourself.” Lolo taught Obama to box and frequently gave his step-son lessons in the importance of strength. “Better to be strong,” he said. “If you can’t be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who’s strong. But always better to be strong yourself.”

A right-wing influence!

While Obama relished having a step-father, Ann was dismayed to see her husband becoming more pro-American and pro-capitalist. After leaving the army, he took a job with the Jakarta branch of the Union Oil Company of California. He moved his family into a bigger house with three bedrooms, a library, and a terrace; he employed domestic staff, including a cook, a houseboy, and two other female servants. He joined the Indonesian Petroleum Club, where he socialized with Europeans and Americans. He began to listen to American music; his favorite song was “Moon River.” While many other women might appreciate these trappings of success, Ann couldn’t stand any of it and got into fierce arguments with Lolo. As Obama writes, “I would overhear him and my mother arguing in their bedroom, usually about her refusal to attend his company dinner parties, where American businessmen from Texas and Louisiana would slap Lolo’s back and boast about the palms they had greased to obtain the new offshore drilling rights, while their wives complained to my mother about the quality of Indonesian help. He would ask how it would look for him to go alone, and remind her that these were her own people, and my mother’s voice would rise to almost a shout. ‘They are not my people.’”

Ann made new friends, mostly left-wing academics from the West and an assortment of Indonesians: newspaper editors, artists, academics, foundation program officers, and local activists. To this group, she scorned Lolo.... Soon Ann and Lolo were living in different worlds, and a divorce between them seemed imminent.

Ann recognized, of course, that Lolo was just trying to survive in a Third World country where corruption was a way of life. Lolo found Ann’s leftist and anti-American sympathies impractical; he thought in terms of power rather than ideals. “Guilt,” he once told her, “is a luxury only foreigners can afford.” Ann understood this, but she understood it in terms of Lolo being an ideological sellout. Obama puts the point very well. “Power. The word fixed in my mother’s mind like a curse . . . . Here power was undisguised, indiscriminate, naked, always fresh in the memory. Power had taken Lolo and yanked him back into line just when he thought he’d escaped, making him feel its weight, letting him know that his life wasn’t his own . . . . And so Lolo had made his peace with power.” This fact, Obama writes, created an “unbreachable barrier between them.” Yet she had an option. “She could always leave if things got too messy.” But then it struck Ann with the force of a revelation that her son admired Lolo, and might pattern his life after him. “She looked out the window now and saw that Lolo and I had moved on, the grass flattened where the two of us had been. The sight made her shudder slightly, and she rose to her feet, filled with a sudden panic. Power was taking her son.”

Right here we see why Ann Obama packed up her son, age ten, and sent him back on his own to America. She didn’t want his values to be shaped by Lolo. She viewed Lolo as a sellout, a power-seeker who had made his peace with capitalism and with America. She wanted her son to be a principled anti-capitalist, anti-American, like her and like someone else she used to know: Barack Obama Sr. Obama writes that his mother “had taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad.” Lolo, from Ann’s point of view, was undermining these lessons, and in her conflicts with him, Obama writes, “She had only one ally . . . and that was the distant authority of my father.... His life had been hard, as hard as anything that Lolo might have known. He hadn’t cut corners, though, or played all the angles. He was diligent and honest, no matter what it cost him. He had led his life according to principles that demanded a different kind of power, principles that promised a higher form of power. I would follow in his example, my mother decided. I had no choice. It was in the genes.”

In the genes. So says the mother — the mother who is at odds with the stepfather and summoning up the persona of the absent biological father. Remember the subtitle to Obama's book: "The Story of Race and Inheritance."

190 comments:

Except for maybe a well-timed one-liner at some point, delivered to comedic effect, if the moment truly presents itself, they would by any reasonable measure be lowering themselves to "respond" to this thing.

I have gotten the impression that Obama's grandfather, Stanley Dunham, was kind of a lazy man which could be due to an anger at the American capitalist system. And Obama's mother was no rocket scientist - she surely got some of her resentment & ideas from her own father or mother. "

Stanley sounds not only like a typical Red, but so many of the anti-war crowd in the 60s; her father must have been a real piece of work and it doesn't surprise me in the least that Choom disowned the grandmother that gave him a good home and a life of privilege.

Like AJ Lynch and edutcher, I keep wondering about Obama's mother. She apparently led an unconventional life-- probably a radical one, given her circumstances. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. But she seems to have had poor judgement and little familial loyalty.

And then Barack writes his book about his father, who raised him even less than his mother.

In couch-psychology circles, we would wonder what kind of a man this would produce. It produced Barack Obama.

Go see the movie, harrogate. Shiloh, to for that matter. What are you guys afraid of?

I went to see Michael Moore's silly little films, mostly for the comedic value of the propaganda. They were boring, tedious and... propagandisdic in the old school Soviet style. Point is, I wasn't afraid to confront Moore's arguments.

C'mon, guys. Give it a whirl! Look at it as going into the Haunted House at the Carnival! Scary Indian immigrant goes all booga-booga on you! Are you afraid of the "other?"

You guys criticizing a film like this that you patently refuse to see is a joke. As pathetic as Amazon book reviewers who don't bother reading the books, but attack the author. Is that the sort of reputation you want?

The bible he claims to hold sacred is a little wishy-washy on that question. But maybe Obama's commitment toward his fellow man comes partly from the fact that his own mother and father did not act like his own keeper.

This is nothing new to anyone who paid the least bit of attention to Obama, especially in the summer and fall of 2007. Three things were, and remain to be, abundantly clear: Obama is pathologically narcissistic, perceives everything through the lens of Marxism and consciously believes in very little except that which aggrandizes himself.

We have dozens of half-breed kids, spawned by Stanley Dunham clones in Woodstock. (Always, half black.)

They're all being raised by guilt-striken white guy step-fathers.

The white guys never measure up to the black revolutionary of the Dunham clones' dreams.

Althouse, I don't know any way to say this, except bluntly. These Dunham clones are striken with black dick worship. They're unhinged.

When the black guy dumps them and the kid (and he always does), they only become more extreme. Often, the clones then take up wearing dreadlocks and become groupies for some reggae band.

The white guys try like hell to hang in there and do the fathering, but the Dunham clones almost always dump them in short order. Duty and responsibility is so boring, in comparison to revolutionary black dick.

"The bible he claims to hold sacred is a little wishy-washy on that question. But maybe Obama's commitment toward his fellow man comes partly from the fact that his own mother and father did not act like his own keeper."

My understanding is that the only reference to my brother's keeper in the bible is when after slaying Able, Cain ask am I my brother's keeper? though I'm no authority on the bible.

The other half of the dilemma for Obama is that both of his parents abandoned him. His father just plain never had anything to do with him. His mother dumped him on his well-to-do grandmother so that she could continue to advance the revolution.

A child who loses a parent, for any reason, becomes obsessed with regaining the attention and love of that parent. And, that child will usually rebel against the values of the caretaker who does raise him, and romanticize the values of the parent who abandons him.

There was a story somewhere in MSM about how Ann and one of her pals became such radical Atheist Marxists. Yes, she had a high school teacher (or two) in Washington (was it Seattle?) who turned her on to the leftwing way of life. And she never looked back.

I was raised in Wisconsin, taught how to work hard and be proud to be an American. Obama's background is a little different. Raised as an Atheist in another country.

You're thinking of classical progressives. The generational progressives are far left-wing ideologues, who like all ideologues of that class exploit people through extortion and simple force to advance their political, economic, and social standing. The left are the ultimate "capitalists" in that they seek personal advantage through the monopoly of authority. In America, they have also seen fit to perpetuate micro divisions in the population and promote behaviors which constitute evolutionary dysfunction. In many ways, the "evil empire" pales in comparison to what the left in America has wrought. There is totalitarian and there is suicidal.

And, the Democrats' insistence that white middle class people cannot be allowed to assert their economic and political self-interest cannot be maintained.

This is what you live by, garage. It's your credo. The interests of gays, blacks and single women must be advanced with a vengeance. Advancing the interests of white middle class people is the same as regenerating the Klan.

That's the sales pitch for Obama. I really don't care how often you pull up the racism BS. Don't mean shit.

Garage, there is a difference between the anti-colonists who founded this country. They believed in God-given (natural) rights, and gave us things like the bill of rights. But they were extremely Western. Christian. Pro-democracy.

The constant blaming and "aha!" towards Althouse for her 2008 vote is tiresome. We get it, you're not saying anything original anymore.

It comes off as smarmy and shrill.

Instead of being smarmy and shrill in 2008 someone should have made this documentary back then. They didn't. So, everyone had a package of assumptions about Obama and a package of assumptions about McCain.

It matches my assumptions about Obama in 2008, but I know a lot of people who were invested in a different kind of Obama then, and it doesn't help the cause to be the constantly annoying guy saying, "I told you so!"

You don't get any extra bonus raffle tickets each time you say, "Wish you voted different, dontcha Ann, dontcha?!"

I generally hate these sort of pop-psych explanations of why powerful people Are the Way They Are. It reminds me of the "theory" that Bush's war policies were about avenging his father or something. Generally too tempting for people who would prefer a simplistic answer rather than having to think too hard about why people may have rational reasons for believing the things that they do (for example - the way some pro-abortion folks won't even consider the idea that anti-abortion folks are concerned about the baby, and only that they want to "control women").

That said, this movie sounds facinating (though I have no intentions to see it - maybe I mean that the discussions are facinating). Reading that passage from Dreams reminds me of how much I hated that book, and how I can't believe that anyone who read it could have supported this man for president.

PaddyO said,"It matches my assumptions about Obama in 2008, but I know a lot of people who were invested in a different kind of Obama then, and it doesn't help the cause to be the constantly annoying guy saying, "I told you so!"

Yeah it's annoying, but the assumption has to be they were dumb so in order for the lesson to sink in they have to constantly be reminded of it.Buncha suckers.

Dinesh D'Souza believes people like Althouse are the "enemy at home" who helped "cause 9/11" because of their liberal positions on social issues such as gay marriage. That's whose hands you're in with this filmmaker.

If the movie was on TV I guess I'd look at it if there was nothing else on, but I'm not going to give D'Souza any money. D'Souza's an un-American terrorist sympathizer.

It's interesting that Obama's mother criticizes "arrogant" westerners while refusing to go with her Indonesian husband to a party because she looks down on the others who attend. She is also looking down on her Indonesian spouse. Who is arrogant here?

This is pure smarmy. People misjudge others all the time. It's the essence of every failed dating relationship or business partnership gone bad. Some people want to believe in the better version more than others.

We buy stuff we find wasn't as good as we thought. We take a job that sounds like a great step only to see it as a huge burden.

All of us make jumps into assumptions based on what we know at the time that turn out to be wrong in part or in full.

The constant blaming and "aha!" towards Althouse for her 2008 vote is tiresome. We get it, you're not saying anything original anymore.

It comes off as smarmy and shrill.

Perhaps to you. To some of us, it's a way of reminding her how shallow we think her reasons for voting for Obama were.

Instead of being smarmy and shrill in 2008 someone should have made this documentary back then. They didn't. So, everyone had a package of assumptions about Obama and a package of assumptions about McCain.

Yeah, damn that D'Souza for not making this movie in 2008!

It matches my assumptions about Obama in 2008, but I know a lot of people who were invested in a different kind of Obama then, and it doesn't help the cause to be the constantly annoying guy saying, "I told you so!"

People allowed themsevles to be conned by a cheapjack flim-flam artist with associates and a history that should have permanently barred him from polite company, let alone the presidency. They refused to listen to real, serious questions about who and what Obama was. They damn well deserve to have their noses rubbed in it again and again.

You don't get any extra bonus raffle tickets each time you say, "Wish you voted different, dontcha Ann, dontcha?!"

If you voted for Obama and were not his natural consistency (black, Marxist, a wallower in white guilt or wholly in thrall to left-wing idiocy), then you failed to exercise due diligence before csating your vote. You prostituted the electoral franchise.

Dinesh D'Souza believes people like Althouse are the "enemy at home" who helped "cause 9/11" because of their liberal positions on social issues such as gay marriage. That's whose hands you're in with this filmmaker.

And Michael Moore thinks Bush was behind 9/11 and that Cheney is part of a secret oil cabal. Any comment?

If the movie was on TV I guess I'd look at it if there was nothing else on, but I'm not going to give D'Souza any money. D'Souza's an un-American terrorist sympathizer.

Hillbuzz listed 10 reasons why we must see this movie and at the end of the 10th reason I still did not have a good reason to see this movie. In fact, saying so is 10 demerits against seeing it. What could it contain that is not already in the trailer, already deconstructed there at Hillbuzz and here on Althouse and even more elsewhere? Why should I see it when my mind is already made up a long time ago? It's a point of view, not new information. I have no good reason to sharpen the acuity of someone else's polemic stance. I'd rather see a movie that helps me be a nicer person, not a sharper arguer.

To some of us, it's a way of reminding her how shallow we think her reasons for voting for Obama were.

Shallow and a lack of intellectual curiosity are apt descriptors for anyone that would vote for a verifiably unqualified person to the highest office in the land. If the polls are remotely accurate, I find it most distressing that after 4 years of his 'leadership' that he garners more than 20% of the electorate.

It wasn't just his white girl friend. Obama himself is a composite character. Given the abandonment and all the contradictory strands in his upbringing, he was woven together a credible and engaging personality. It's good he was able to politicize his resentments and losses. It's so much healthier to blame capitalism or colonialism for the sorrows of life than your own shabby parents and their self indulgent stupidity..

Obama is our first president who does not share the belief that the U.S. is a virtuous society."

Are we?

If we ever were, are we now?

Robert Cook, please accept this as genuine curiosity and not snark (you facinate me), but can you name a more virtuous country? I've always wondered, are your criticisms against the US and the US presidents based on a comparison to some known other, or some yet unrealized ideal?

Even accepting that these mean the same things, so? The 9/11 hijackers and a bunch of nuns ministering to the poor are both strong believers in a monotheistic god, but that doesn't mean that they have much of anything else in common.

"Obama is our first president who does not share the belief that the U.S. is a virtuous society."

Are we?

If we ever were, are we now?

At the end of WW-II, the US had the standing armies, and the Bomb and could have launched into world domination by force. Imagine any other country in the world in that position. You do not know how they would react.

The US elected to sign good agreements even with the Japanese, and post WW-II both West Germany and Japan became massive economic power houses.

I think there is a bit of founding American character in that move.

Somehow, I doubt WW-II Germany, Japan, probably most of our allies, including Russia, would have held back the hammer of God.

What's happening to America now, with this massive intervention of Government? I think it's destroying America's character, and I don't think it is worth it.

Lyssa, the leftist assumption is that humans are inherently bad, especially in groups, but that left humans are less bad than right ones. That explains all. Leftist leaders become God-like, because they are the least bad. America is bad, but it's less bad than other bad places. "I, a leftist, am bad, but I try to be less bad, and I project evil on the people less left than I." Communism has never truly been tried, etc.

"And Michael Moore thinks Bush was behind 9/11 and that Cheney is part of a secret oil cabal. Any comment?

I don't like Michael Moore. As far as I can tell, he's a communist as well as a liar. President Obama is a moderate, despite the propagandistic attempts to make him seem otherwise.

Michael Moore once attacked Obama for not being black enough ("I thought I voted for a black guy"), which is white left-wing racism. And Moore generally thinks Obama is not leftist enough. Moore doesn't support Obama but doesn't want Romney to win, sorta like how Crack Emcee doesn't support Romney but doesn't want Obama to win.

The Hard Left and the Hard Right have both already lost this election, so I sleep well at night.

Not in the fucking least...unless you assume "leftwing progressive" presidents will work assiduously for the benefit of the ruling class at the expense of the rest of us.

I think at most, this kind of mining of Obama's biography can give us insight into his prejudices and preconceptions. His irritable intellectual reflexes, as it were.

But balanced against those malign instincts, you must also consider that he is weak. Other than his amour propre, he doesn't really seem to care much about anything -- he invests time and energy into issues once they are personalised, but he doesn't seem to care about the issues as such. He likes the mandate in Obamacare because people call it Obamacare. He excoriated the mandate in Hillary Clinton's plan because it was Clinton's plan, not his. When challenged, he is querulous and petty. His vanity and inexperience have made him easy prey for his advisors, sometimes to our benefit and sometimes to our detriment.

I am glad That Althouse has come to see Obama for what he truly is-a hateful, anti-American, Affirmative Action scumbag. It will take a generation to undo the damage that Obama has done to this country.

"They damn well deserve to have their noses rubbed in it again and again."

It comes off increasingly smarmy and shrill. And increasingly boring. Saying, "I told you so" once is often an effective reminder.

Saying it constantly is boring. And counterproductive.

And I voted against Obama in 2008 because I didn't believe the hype.

Some people like being shrill and smarmy, though. They're the ones who need everyone to know how right they are on a particular subject. Which means it's not really about Ann, it's about some pose of triumph. Which gets boring 4 years later and hundreds of instances on.

President Obama is a moderate, despite the propagandistic attempts to make him seem otherwise.

Would his two autobiographies be included in that propaganda? Perhaps you didn't read them. Perhaps you are unaware or ignore the fact he tends to appoint far left individuals in his administration. Perhaps his membership in a left wing racist church didn't strike you as out of the mainstream.

Assuming you can put aside partisan blinders, you don't need to listen to Rush or Breitbart but rather Obama's own words to conclude he's anything but moderate.

Given that his Dad abandoned him and his mom was a flake, it's surprising that Obama still retained a bit of their philosophy/worldview. Most kids would have rebelled. Maybe he did. If he had stuck with rebelling against his mom's worldview, he'd probably be the Republican nominee this year. Anyway, it's just as likely he was influenced by the leftwing nonsense he picked up at Columbia and Harvard. In the end, though, Obama's pretty much in the mold of McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis, with much more shrewdness and much better political skill. This stuff he is pushing is the same sort of stuff Dems have been pushing since FDR's failed 2d Bill of Rights.

Given that his Dad abandoned him and his mom was a flake, it's surprising that Obama still retained a bit of their philosophy/worldview. Most kids would have rebelled.

In my experience, the whole idea of extended rebellion against terrible parents is mostly a myth. Most kids wind up growing up to be like their parents in a lot of ways, regardless of how stupid that seems and what you would think that they would have learned.

I guess we should be happy, on that note, that he's at least (apparently), a pretty decent husband and father.

Those who who try vainly to paint Obama as a "leftist,""socialist," yadda yadda yadda,when challenged, always point to his past, his rhetoric of (moderate) progressive ideas (all issued prior to his becoming president), and his membership is a supposedly "left-wing" church. (A pastor telling the truth about America doesn't necessarily make it a "left-wing" church.)

In any case, Obama (or any office holder) cannot be accused of being anything but he he or she is in office, his or her rhetoric or past behavior being completely irrelevant.

If Obama had the whole of Marx's CAPITAL tattooed on his body, this would not make him, as judged by his governance in office, any sort of "progressive" President, much less "the perfect leftwing progressive President."

A pastor telling the truth about America doesn't necessarily make it a "left-wing" church.

Actually it does since it wasn't truth but standard leftist agitprop one can hear sitting in a university poli sci class.

Your classification of Obama's views as 'moderate progressive' merely illustrate how far to the left your views are. Do you believe in heaven Mr. Cook? If not I fear you are going to be disappointed since that is the only type of society that would seem to meet your standards.

The Jocks and Sosh's are BAD and pursue an easy popularity since they are both pretty and physically powerful - while the shop-class rejects smoking in the parking lot are dangerous but COOL because they are the children of the lower class and drive fast jalopies and ahve tattoos.

It matches my assumptions about Obama in 2008, but I know a lot of people who were invested in a different kind of Obama then, and it doesn't help the cause to be the constantly annoying guy saying, "I told you so!

I'm not one of those gloating, but I can understand why it still comes up. Our hostess still clings to the idea that McCain would have been worse, but can never articulate why when called on for it.

I'd at least have an easier time understanding if she'd either admit she was wrong, or explain why McCain would have been worse.

I thoroughly agree. But it doesn't address the point at all. If you're on the right (or even moderate), why do you vote for the guy who is obviously more left wing than the actual moderate? Unless you're somewhere on the spectrum (at the time) closer to the lefty candidate, I don't see the logic.

Reading our hostess' postings after the last 3-1/2 years, however, has me believing that she was still closer to McCain on that spectrum. That said, why would she still claim McCain would have been worse?

I read about Obama's mother in 2008 and all I could feel was pity for the little boy she so totally screwed up. Imagine being a kid and being told that the father who abandoned you & doesn't love you is God's gift to the world. He's a wonderful guy, and if you were a more satisfactory child, maybe he'd have stayed. The reality was, Dad was a falling down, womanizing, abusive drunk, and Dunham was well rid of him. If she'd been a normal mother, instead of a complete loon, she would have explained to him that "Son, you are a perfect child, you are lovable, and if he doesn't appreciate you, he's the one who is defective. There's something wrong with him, not you." Her failure to tell him this means that there was also a lot wrong with her.

Those who who try vainly to paint Obama as a "leftist,""socialist," yadda yadda yadda,when challenged, always point to his past

"There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

He hasn't killed the kulaks. He hasn't had show trials. He hasn't signed a non-agression pact with the Nazis.

He's not really a socialist until he does those things.

I think those are the identifiers for Stalinism. Cook merely believes Corporatism, the union of government and big business, is abhorrent, and thus supports every instance in which it is proposed by Democrats.

I voted for the ol'Rino, but didn;t want to, but I thought up one, and only one good reason to not vote for him and that was I could see the shit storm the economy was in, and the shit storm that Bush had created for Republicans, and decided that if Zero did get elected, he and the democrats would over reach, as they always do, and make their party toxic for another 10 years, which they have. They get full blame for the shitty economy no matter how much they like to protest.

As far as Zero being a "moderate", everybody see's their position as moderate, even the OWS and the anarchists. Pretty much a he said she said argument. I'm sure the guards at Auschwitz thought that they were pretty moderate too.

Just as there is no more difference in the political parties now(would anyone argue that both are not tax and spend, the only difference is a matter of degree),future elections will be based on progressive vs. conservative, with progressives being represented as the tax and spend party we have now, that looks to foreign countries on how to handle American affairs, and conservatives represented by the Tea Party, asking for a return to a more strict reading of the Constitution.

@ RC

Zero is as moderate as any penny-ante dictator. We live in a banana republic 'til he is defeated in november. How anyone can look at his actions vis a vie crony capitalism and not call him "Generalisimo" is beyond me.

Wow. I might have to read Dreams From My Father, if only to read between the lines. Obama's own words seem as damning as D'Souza's when considered in the context of his parentage, career, and presidency.

The Dunham family offers a Marxist-oriented timeline from the early 20th century to late 60s and 70s left-wing radicalism. Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro was an indoctrinated red diaper baby who wanted to be brown, just like her son and her subsequent husbands. And that just makes her a pathetic wannabe.

I suspect he retained some of Lolo's lessons about power and its importance. I recall reading a profile of him in The New Republic during the primaries in 2008. They had a quote from one of his friends who was explaining why he gave up community organizing to go to law school. He told his friend it was about power. To be an effective organizer, you have to have the power. I wish I could find a link to the piece. That revelation has stuck with me throughout his Presidency. He didn't go into politics because he liked it a la Clinton, or because he was a policy wonk, a la Ryan. He went into politics so he could wield power.

Fighting a war over not wanting to be a British colony means you are pro colonial. That's it!"

garage slept through American History. Ben Franklin went to England to try to resolve the issues with the mother country. There was no thought of independence until he was treated shamefully by the North government. He then returned to Pennsylvania and later went to France.

Based solely on how he has governed, I think Obama could either be a Marxist who has embraced a Fabian Socialist methodology in order to bring about the revolution, or a Fabian Socialist who would happily embrace a Marxist revolution. But he could in no way be described a as moderate American. Perhaps you can identify for me a group of people in which Obama would be a moderate?

He says he wants to fundamentally transform America. That is not a moderate ambition. He also wants to rebuild America. Lots of rebuilding jobs begin with the a teardown. Nothing moderate about that.

I'm remembering the intro to to "The Six Million Dollar Man". Obama thinks of himself as the guy who can rebuild America, faster, stronger, better. However, Obama keeps forgetting the horrible crash that has to precede the rebuilding. As bad as you may think Bush may be, he did not take out one eye, one arm and both legs of America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HofoK_QQxGc

Eight years is not enough time for the tear down, much less the rebuilding. But you can sure do a lot of damage trying.

And by the way, what does Obama have against Lee Majors anyway? I'm sure Farrah Fawcett and I weren't the only people who thought he was cool as he was. Why does Obama have to subject him to a horrible crash and rebuild him anyway?

"Dinesh D'Souza believes people like Althouse are the "enemy at home" who helped "cause 9/11" because of their liberal positions on social issues such as gay marriage. That's whose hands you're in with this filmmaker.

If the movie was on TV I guess I'd look at it if there was nothing else on, but I'm not going to give D'Souza any money. D'Souza's an un-American terrorist sympathizer."

You might be surprised. Early in the movie, D'Souza describes how the Dartmouth admin would get on the Dartmouth Review for being sophomoric, and they would laugh and say, "but we're sophomores!"

I think its finally sunk in that sophomoric ain't cutting it, and this movie is an attempt at something (a lot) more grown-up.

You can see doubt creeping into D'Souza's mind as the movie goes along. The ideology is still strong (and I happen to agree with much of it) but he's starting to question how he promotes it and whether the anti-colonialism that clearly animated Barack Sr. and friends is so completely different from that of the Founding Fathers and his own ancestors, which he describes movingly and honestly.

The interview with Obama's brother is fascinating. They agree that Marxist-flavored anti-colonialism is on some level absurd in a "what have the Romans ever done for us?" sense, but Obama's brother's body language is so saying, "Dude, don't make me stick a knife in my brother in front of the world" and D'Souza's face is like "Yeah, that is a dick move - this sounded so much better when we were writing the script."

The polemic parts come across as much more half-hearted than the parts where he opens himself up for some real understanding.

As the globalizers (aligning themselves with some imgainary "left") continue to do to the indigenous culture of America (from Ben Franklin to Billy Graham) what they've done to indigenous cultures, good and bad, around the world, there is more common ground there than one might imagine.

Her failure to tell him this means that there was also a lot wrong with her. Her father named her Stanley, unwilling to wait for a son that never came. That had to have left a mark.

I gather Meade and maybe Althouse are taking the long view--better to have 4 years of Carter crap to get us a Reagan than 4 years of floundering Ford to get us someone truly wretched in reaction. But can Mitt change the world as Reagan did?

Except that Althouse voted for Ford and then Carter in 80. Perhaps she's wised up a bit.

"I'm not one of those gloating, but I can understand why it still comes up. Our hostess still clings to the idea that McCain would have been worse, but can never articulate why when called on for it.

=============Actually, Althouse articulated her reasons quite well in her post "Why McCain Lost Me".

Others added some very good additional reasons NOT to vote for McCain.

1. McCains long history of treacherously backstabbing Republicans in order to please the NY Times and his other fave media friends.

2. At a time when the nation was sick to death of Neocon wars of nation-building and Adventure! - McCain campaigned on a new list of Great New Wars he wanted the US to get into. Heroes with Boots on the Ground to Georgia to save Our Dear Friends there once McCain's friends started a conflict.A fabulous war with Iran.Back to Somalia and war to save the Noble Darfurans.Possible war with Venezeula.Possible War with Yemen.Possible War with Syria and Lebanon to Help Our Dear Israeli friends.

3. McCains admission that for 20 years he had barely focused on the domestic economy because to him - foreign policy and the military were far more consequential.

4. McCains long history of in a "bipartisan spirit" - of protecting Democrats by giving them fig leaves for cover. Had he been elected, we probably would have seen the Pelosi-McCain healthcare bill. Speaker Pelosi would still have been Speaker Pelosi now...and McCain would have been thick as thieves with his "Dear Old Friend, Harry".

I think you are mistaken, chicklit. #3 in Cedarford's list was probably her number one reason. As I recall, she also wanted to see the Democrats take some ownership of national security instead of just taking Harry Reid-type potshots at Bush and the Republicans.

Yes, that link describes what I meant. Fabian Socialists *are* significantly more moderate than Marxists. But, in an American population a Fabian Socialist is not a moderate. She's on the left side of the left.

"Cedarford, I'm pretty sure Althouse's real reason had more to do with McCain's stance on on the litmus issue, especially DADT."

No. That's wrong. I never said that and I don't think gay rights is a key presidential issue.

I thought McCain had shortcomings and there were a few bonus positives from Obama, chiefly: 1. the Democratic Party would have to step up and own the wars and national security (instead of more bullshit carping from the sidelines) and 2. Obama might take us to a new stage in the long, painful process of becoming rational and modern on racial issues.

Obama made quite a point in the last election of explaining that even though he spent much of his childhood in foreign schools, his mother would get him up at 4:30am to teach him about his native land (feel free to put "native land" in quotes if that's your inclination). Yes, I said, but what was she teaching him. The woman clearly despised America and her lesson plan undoubtedly reflected that (what a shame Barack's home schooling predated Zinn's A People's History).

I understand the Dunham's moved to Mercer Island specifically so Stanley Ann could attend one of the most left-leaning public high schools in the US and even there she was a stand-out for her politics. Red diaper babies generally beget red diaper babies.

Sydney said: He told his friend it was about power. To be an effective organizer, you have to have the power.

Yes, I remember that and it made a big impression on me, too. It's difficult to fundamentally transform America from the bottom up; you require the power to do it from the top down. I think of it whenever he signs one of his more egregious executive orders.

"1. the Democratic Party would have to step up and own the wars and national security (instead of more bullshit carping from the sidelines) and 2. Obama might take us to a new stage in the long, painful process of becoming rational and modern on racial issues."

That's a laugh. Who couldn't have foreseen the wars just disappearing from the media spotlight? They were only useful when trashing Republicans.

And spending twenty years in a Black Liberation Theology church was not a good indicator of a man whose goal was racial harmony. Besides if you take away the race card what do the Dems have left?

But what always struck me as your worst blind spot was your inability to judge the man's character. You swallowed the no-drama-Obama, calm, reasonable, and rational nonsense hook, line, and sinker.

A much clearer assessment revealed him to be a pathological narcissist whose entire animating force was to achieve reflected glory in the eyes of the onlooker.

Robert Cook said: ... his membership is a supposedly "left-wing" church. (A pastor telling the truth about America doesn't necessarily make it a "left-wing" church.)

Does its espousal of the Marxist, separatist, anti-Semetic, anti-white Black Liberation Theology necessarily make it a "left-wing" church? Obama said he looked for a church that "spoke to me." I think his choice is quite telling.

---unless you assume "leftwing progressive" presidents will work assiduously for the benefit of the ruling class at the expense of the rest of us.

Yes, exactly.

I assume, with the weight of history in my assumption, that he will work for the benefit of the socialist ruling class (in Soviet Russia called the nomenklatura) while at the same time mouthing the progressive platitudes of fairness. The Democratic Party is rife with rich rich rich, most of whom did not "build their fortunes but instead milked the system.

How much did Rahm Emmanuel make from Fanny Mae? How did Harry Reid become a multi millionaire? How about rich rich rich Nancy Pelosi?

See how it plays out with the progressive concern for the masses?

Castro is a multi-billionaire while his people have been very close to starving for years. The new North Korean Kim inherits the riches and excess of his father while his poor wretched subjects scrounge for grass to eat.

You want our common fellow Americans not to be exploited? Vote for Freedom and to end progressivism.

Poor Garage. He studied History after the Left crapped elementary education....

Here's some remedial education you poor ignorant slob....

====They were protesting a private company

1.Primary

The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

=====and the East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies.

Secondary.

We can think of EIC as the King's Solyndra Tea Company or perhaps General Electric which is an Obama crony.

=====seized a private ship

Now we're talking....Perhaps we should have a party and seize MF Global and whatever company Obama bundler John Corzine (missing 1.2 billion dollars) will start next. I can see us throwing bundles of 100 dollar bills out the window....

"Based solely on how he has governed, I think Obama could either be a Marxist who has embraced a Fabian Socialist methodology in order to bring about the revolution, or a Fabian Socialist who would happily embrace a Marxist revolution."

Sheer lunacy.

"But he could in no way be described a as moderate American. Perhaps you can identify for me a group of people in which Obama would be a moderate?"

The present day Republican party.

"He says he wants to fundamentally transform America. That is not a moderate ambition. He also wants to rebuild America. Lots of rebuilding jobs begin with the a teardown. Nothing moderate about that."

Such talk is pure political boilerplate. Baloney. Bollocks. Bullshit.

When is this fundamental transformation supposed to begin? He's at the end of his first term and he's changed squat. He's rebuilt nothing. He's merely continued the basic program of his predecessor, but made it worse.

I do think Obama can be fairly accused of bringing the American police state more into the open, but he's doing so not in service of destroying capitalism or imprisoning the the oligarchs, he's doing it in service to their agenda.

Obama is as much a lackey of the 1% as have been any of the last several Presidents.

The American Revolutionaries were not "anti-colonial". They were anti-monarchists. The Revolution started as a tax rebellion before it became an independence movement. But the Declaration of Independence was addressed directly at King George III.

What the Founders sought, the basis of classical liberalism, libertarianism, Tea Partyism, etc is the aversion to the concentration of power. The way to avoid concentrations of power is to delegate it to the smallest groups, namely individuals. The system of Checks and Balances, the Advice and Consent clause, the separate branches were all created to prevent the concentration of power and especially the re-establishment of a monarchy. Without constitutional restraint, it becomes possible for 51% of the population to vote the other 49% into slavery.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the goal of the so-called "Progressives". The concentration of all power in the hands of a government run by "Progressives" that through the dictatorship of the proletariat, unrestrained by quaint concepts of constitutional constraints, enslave opposing minorities to their will. And Obama, the Most Arrogant Man In the World plans on being their King.

Quite similar to how the feminist bullshit about "workplace harassment of women" ended on the fragrant 2/3rds of Bill Clintons cigars and talk of the Manhattan progressive Jewish feminists like Steinham in how many gropes a guy should get. Quite funny and hysterical about how they, like Code Pink, revealed themselves as not morally-based, but democrat party operative- based.

I do remember Obama complaining that the Constitution wasn't done right. And it had to be fixed.

He rewrites laws and the Constitution with a wave of his elegant hand and makes religious people violate their beliefs, erasing their First Amendment rights, making illegal immigrants legal, and kicking the Rule of Law to the kerb as he sees that unions get the fruit of the bondholders risks. At no cost, of course.

Personally, I find D'Souza's hypothesis somewhat convincing--too simple in soem ways, but probably with significant amount of truth. It does help explain a lot.

But then the question arises, how not just Obama but the leadership of teh Democratic Party and maybe 1/3 of the country seem to see things pretty much the same way, without all the rare or unique features of Obama's birth and upbringing. After all, he didn't make himself President and cast his own votes in Congress, there are millions of people who see things his way, and millions more (perhaps) who may disagree a bit but not enough to stop supporting him.

Well Martin -- part of it is BHO doesn't communicate all that he believes.

Being biracial and exotic does have a certain appeal to Progressives.

BHO also has developed a way of connecting with certain people without doing anything which is almosty cultish. It's that white screen thing ... and it's very disarming because he tells people what they do ... and they still do it!

I keep thinking of Lawrence Tribe gushing over how he couldn't let this amazing person do scut work in the basement like the rest of the 1Ls. (Or 2s or whoever does the scut work in the basement of Harvard Law.)

And how did he vote? "Present" so people could project the right position on him.

BHO is special and special people get it. Those who don't? We aren't special. We're the "them."

“She had only one ally . . . and that was the distant authority of my father.... His life had been hard, as hard as anything that Lolo might have known. He hadn’t cut corners, though, or played all the angles. He was diligent and honest, no matter what it cost him. He had led his life according to principles that demanded a different kind of power, principles that promised a higher form of power. I would follow in his example, my mother decided. I had no choice. It was in the genes.”

So his father was an honest open man, and a bigamist with at least three wives?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53968.html

'Harvard administrators, the memo stated, “were having difficulty with his financial arrangements and couldn’t seem to figure out how many wives he had.”'

Yeah, wnat a noble honest man, who lied about already being married to marry his mother... who could fail to look up to a man like that.

In the context of using Mr. Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, how much of it did he fabricate and, therefore, how much of it is trustworthy?

In a court of law, if a witness has been found to have told a lie, his entire testimony becomes suspect. The court then has to wring out the "real" truth from the witness, which itself can become an exercise in hair-pulling.

Now that we know that Mr. Obama fabricated a girlfriend in Dreams From My Father, how much more has he fabricated or composited?

We caught him lying about Americans being able to keep their health insurance. "Period." We caught him lying about Americans being able to keep their doctor. "Period."

To what degree are we able to trust anything Mr. Obama says? What else does he fabricate out of thin air?